Multinationals from Russia, India, China, and South Africa (RICS)

Abstract

The new global players In 1421, some eighty years before the Portuguese sea voyages took place, a vast Chinese armada set sail to explore the world. The armada was intended to map unknown lands, rather than to conquer them. The last surviving ships returned to China in the summer and autumn of 1423. The maps showed they had not merely rounded the Cape of Good Hope and traversed the Atlantic to chart [the Caribbean] islands, they had then gone on to explore Antarctica and the Arctic, North and South America, and had crossed the Pacific to Australia. They had solved the problems of calculating latitude and longitude and had mapped the earth and the heavens with equal accuracy. Menzies (2002: 36) However, when they returned, China had changed. The Emperor was dying and the mandarins were dismantling the worldwide empire apparatus he had nearly created. China was entering a long night of isolation from the rest of the world. Though most of the maps were burned, a few survived and were traded with European countries. The Portuguese and the Spanish probably had some of them when they ventured into sea voyages toward the end of the fifteenth century. In the late sixteenth century, China accounted for some 30 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), while Western Europe represented about 20 percent and Japan less than 5 percent; at that time, North America was still a wild country.